Monday, November 8, 2010

Death of an Illustrator

This post has nothing to do with Animation and much less with 3D, but since our program is an Animation and Illustration program, I wanted to share this sad news with you all.



One of the most talented illustrators from my home country, Peter Vos, passed away over the weekend. I have had the pleasure of meeting him, through his son Sander Vos (who has become one of the top film editors in The Netherlands). I think most Dutch people from my generation cherish the memory of children's books he illustrated and his great "Beesten Kwartet", which is probably pretty untranslatable. Rest in Peace!



Since you are probably not familiar with his great body of work, often depicting animals and with a preference for birds withing the animal kingdom, I am posting some images with this that I found on the Internet. I am happy to own the book "Peter Vos, Tekenaar", and will probably browse through it once more tonight.



Thursday, November 4, 2010

Final Project "Traum"

These are the sketches for my final project. They part of my short animation which I called "Traum" (Dream). I scanned the pages from my sketchbook.

On the first page are the concept sketches and structure studies for the main tower in which most of the story takes place. The tower is based on "Tatlin's Monument for Third International" which is a Constructivist Architectural monument that was meant to be a symbol for Modernity but it was never built because it wasn't really practical.


On this page I worked out the title sequence, the middle and the end of the animation. I flipped the establishing shot for the first scene and drew the sculpture that will be at the top of the tower. I also roughly sketched the inside view of the tower and other objects that didn't make it in the final storyboard.


This is the storyboard in one page (it's a big image).


Here is the storyboard panel by panel. In case you couldn't understand my handwriting, the story is a dream set in an alternate universe inspired by German Expressionism and Russian Constructivism. It begins with an unknown character, who after taking a break from running up a long never-ending staircase (title sequence & establishing shot), continues running up until he gets to a gigantic tower. The reason of his running is unknown and irrelevant since this is a dream. The whole story is seen from his P.O.V. until the last scene. After, he reaches the tower, he enters, takes a second to admire the architecture an keeps going up the stairs. At the top, he is hypnotized by a shining fountain that gives off a mysterious light. He finally drinks from the fountain and is transformed into a statue at which point the camera switches from his P.O.V. to a low angle. We see him for a quick second, mainly focusing on his shadow which becomes still as the character is petrified and then we fade out. The ending is open ended.








Thank you for checking this out and let me know what you think.





Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Rendered Wine Cellar Scene




Here is my scene with two different kinds of lighting. The first scene has two spotlights: one that is coming from the doorway at the top of the stairs and another which is coming from the ceiling light. The second image shows the scene with the light form the top of the stairs only.

Ghost Princess

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Rose V - character sketches


These are my two main characters in my comic for my senior project. Their names are Rebecca and Andrea. (The shorter one, Andrea, is the main character.)
I'll have more drawings up soon, as I'm sketching out the layouts for the comic pages themselves.
You'll have to forgive me for the erase lines, it wasn't very good paper that I drew them on.

Monday, November 1, 2010

Samantha rough sketches for final







Here are my sketches for the final project...

Final Project-Rough Sketch


Here is a rough sketch of my final. It's going to be a floating castle controlled by a ghost princess. I'm pretty sure this idea has been done already. Please let me know if it is and if you have any suggestions. Thank you!

-D